January 2022

matrix resurrections, i am not your negro (2016), harry potter reunion, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016), misha and the wolves, harry potter 3, harry potter 5, there's something in the water (2019), 9 to 5: the story of a movement (2020), harry potter 6, harry potter 7, reversing roe (2018), the rachel divide (2018), one of us (2017)

why so much harry potter? lol, j joe jas rewatched them all after watching the HBO reunion special which he said he didn't really care to watch anyway. I've watched a few with him, obviously.

less reading this month. have been very very busy at work so have spent a lot of nights either working or completely zoned out.

Following Data - How Much Americans Make
The Atlantic - Is Old Music Killing New Music?
The Atlantic - The Future of Work Is a 60-Year Career
BBC News - Kenyan vigilantes taking on avocado gangs
The Smithsonian - How the Potato Chip Took Over America
The Atlantic - We Live By a Unit of Time That Doesn’t Make Sense
Food Tank - Opinion | France’s Ban on Food Waste Three Years Later
Gallup - U.S. Charitable Donations Rebound; Volunteering Still Down
Popular Science - The ultimate guide to reusing and buying N95 masks
University of California - Spoiler alert: spoilers make you enjoy stories more
Food52 - Italians Avoided Pizza for Centuries—Tourism Changed Everything
The Guardian - Polar bears move into abandoned Arctic weather station – photo essay
CBS Sacramento - California College Students Will Be Offered $10K For Public Service
YouGov - More than half of Americans support a maximum age limit for elected officials
Toronto Star - Israel capped CEO pay for banking execs at $1 million. Its unique experiment could work here, too
Market Watch - Up to three-quarters of the $800 billion in disbursed PPP funds flowed to business owners instead of workers, study finds

Forbes - Billionaire Mark Cuban Opens Online Pharmacy To Provide Affordable Generic Drugs
awesome!!! still hate that he attached his name to it tho. could've easily picked something less to do with his ego, more to do with his point

december 2021

unrest (2017), the river runner, miss sloane (2016), the alpinist (2020), 14 peaks (2021), don't look up

The Atlantic - How Parking Destroys Cities
NYT - How Beijing Influences the Influencers
Pew Research - The State of Gig Work in 2021
Neiman Lab - It’s not their job to buy you cake
LA Times - How will California’s new laws affect you?
Outside - Cotopaxi opens up about recent Facebook scam
BBC - New Zealand to ban cigarettes for future generations
Chron - Volunteers need help replacing stolen ghost bikes in Houston
The Nation - New York City’s Radical Proposal for Noncitizen Voting
The Conversation - How Christmas Became an American Holiday Tradition
Gastro Obscura - Why Are So Dang Many Potato Chip Brands From Pennsylvania?
Rest of World - How Shein beat Amazon at its own game — and reinvented fast fashion
NPR - This Is How The White Population Is Actually Changing Based On New Census Data
SF Gate - San Francisco-based DoorDash is requiring engineers to deliver food — and they’re furious
CBS - Millions of workers retired during the pandemic. The economy needs them to "unretire," experts say.
Kaiser Health News - West Virginia Sen. Manchin Takes the Teeth Out of Democrats’ Plan for Seniors’ Dental Care
Huffington Post - I'm Black But Look White. Here Are The Horrible Things White People Feel Safe Telling Me.

ProPublica - States Are Hoarding $5.2 Billion in Welfare Funds Even as the Need for Aid Grows
"According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 16.1% of children under age 18 lived in poverty in 2020, up from 14.4% the year before."
"Tennessee has $790 million in federal welfare funding sitting around — the largest pool of unspent welfare dollars nationwide — though it has recently promised to spend it. Hawaii has $364 million idling in an account, equivalent to $2,923 per person living in poverty. And Oklahoma has $264 million, nearly double its annual TANF budget of $138 million."

November 2022

the french dispatch, okja (2017), good hair (2009), picture a scientist (2020), disclosure (2020)

Vox - The “ghost stores” of Instagram
MediBank - The history of orange juice
Quartz - There is no shortage of US truck drivers
The Atlantic - Why I’ll Keep Saying ‘Pregnant Women
NYT - What Paternity Leave Does for a Father’s Brain
Axios - Scoop: FEC lets foreigners finance U.S. ballot fights
The Atlantic - The Enormous Hole That Whaling Left Behind
The Ringer - The Deep and Twisted Roots of the American Yam
NYT - Moderna and U.S. at Odds Over Vaccine Patent Rights
The Atlantic - Why Health-Care Workers Are Quitting in Droves
The Atlantic - The Inventors of America’s Most Dangerous Idea
The Atlantic - Are Wind Turbines a Danger to Wildlife? Ask the Dogs.
The Atlantic - America's Never-Ending Battle Against Flesh-Eating Worms
The Atlantic - The Deadly Myth That Human Error Causes Most Car Crashes
NewsNation - From tummy tucks to facelifts: Pet plastic surgery is happening in Ohio
NY Times - Italy’s unvaccinated can still work with a swab test. But it will cost them.
NBC - Georgetown study: ‘To succeed in America, it’s better to be born rich than smart’
The Guardian - Revealed: the true extent of America’s food monopolies, and who pays the price
The State - They executed people for the state of South Carolina. For some, it nearly destroyed them.
LA Times - Dear UC Santa Barbara: Don’t let a petulant billionaire build a prison dorm on your campus
The Guardian - ‘It’s the biggest open secret out there’: the double lives of white-collar workers with two jobs
Washington Post - More Americans say they’re not planning to have a child, new poll says, as U.S. birthrate declines
Business Insider - Corporations are using inflation as an excuse to raise prices and make fatter profits — and it's making the problem worse

Bloomberg CityLab - Where Did All the Public Bathrooms Go?
"the U.S. has only eight toilets per 100,000 people overall — tied with Botswana. (Iceland leads their ranking, with 56 per 100,000 residents.)"

I watched Good Hair by Chris Rock. it's about black women's hair. I think it's soooo interesting how the grass is always greener. i have the absolute straightest hair. i got a perm and it literally went away after after two showers. (disclaimer, when it's wet it's still a bit wavy, but when dry, not at all). more tellingly, i didn't own a hairbrush for a decade plus because my hair is so straight, it doesn't tangle. i finally bought a hairbrush because it's in the shape of a hedgehog and because joe would chase me around the apartment with a comb. but anyway, I think the MOST beautiful hair is black women's natural hair! I love a big afro! and dreads, and tight curls. amazing and so beautiful.
the "best" part of the documentary is the way these men talk about women is hilarious. there's a scene in a barbershop where rock asks when the last time these men touched a black woman's hair was, if they're allowed to, even in sex, touch a black woman's hair. and if this isn't why some black men prefer white women, because there aren't any barriers. and one guy totally says yes. wow. 

October 2021

less stress at work this month, so have the energy to actually "do" something at night. plus, I think I may now be less discriminating in choosing "notable articles."

the midnight sky (2020), judas and the black messiah (2020), dune

Simon Garfield - mauve: how one man invented a color that changed the world

Slate - Where’s My Lyme Vaccine?
The Hustle - The economics of dollar stores
Vox - The surprising downsides to planting trillions of trees
The Atlantic - Different Cultures Define Happiness Differently
The Nation - “Feel-Good” News Story or Poverty Propaganda?
EuroNews - Babies are full of microplastics, new research shows
Vox - America’s monopoly problem stretches far beyond Big Tech
AP - Colorado woman who won’t get vaccinated denied transplant
Vox - The very cute, totally disturbing tale of the American “it” dog
NYT - Why Do American Grocery Stores Still Have an Ethnic Aisle?
Wired - Religious Exemptions for Vaccine Mandates Shouldn't Exist
NYT - How Other Nations Pay for Child Care. The U.S. Is an Outlier.
The Atlantic - Why Are Americans Still—Still!—Wearing Cloth Masks?
NYT - White Tiger and Cheetah Furs: A Mess of Trump Gift Exchanges
America Magazine - Pope Francis’ 9 commandments for a just economy
Gastro Obscura - Picturing China’s Bamboo Chopstick Industry From the Sky
NYT - Moderna, Racing for Profits, Keeps Covid Vaccine Out of Reach of Poor
NYT - From ‘The Sopranos’ to ‘Star Trek,’ Pop-Culture Cookbooks Fuel Fandoms
NPR - Hospitals Have Started Posting Their Prices Online. Here's What They Reveal
New York Magazine - Will ‘the Great Wealth Transfer’ Trigger a Millennial Civil War?
Vice - ‘People Work 100 Days Straight’: Kellogg’s Workers Shut Down Cereal Factories
Teen Vogue - Documented Dreamers Lack the Protections DACA Offers Young Immigrants
The Nation Relying on Public-Private Partnerships Has Weakened America’s Pandemic Response
Eye on Design - Don’t Worry, These Gangly-armed Cartoons Are Here to Protect You From Big Tech
Slate - I Signed Up to Write College Essays for Rich Kids. I Found Cheating Is More Complicated Than I Thought.
Smithsonian - The Rules About How to Address the U.S. Flag Came About Because No One Wanted to Look Like a Nazi
The Conversation - Psychological ‘specialness spirals’ can make ordinary items feel like treasures – and may explain how clutter accumulates
Citizens United - Report: For 20 Top-Selling Drugs, Big Pharma Made Far More From U.S. Sales Than From the Rest of the World Combined

LA Times - California outlawed the all-white-male boardroom. That move is reshaping corporate America
"The European rules tend to be mostly gender-focused, as opposed to American targets that also aim to boost racial and ethnic diversity."

The Nation - Why Isn’t Steve Bannon in Jail? Ask the Democrats.
"If the Trump era has taught us one thing, however, it’s that being absolutely wrong about the law in every way is okay if nobody has the will to hold you accountable."
"Which is why Trump cronies threaten the government. They know there will be no consequences for their actions. I don’t think Bannon is refusing to testify because he’s “afraid” of Donald Trump, I think he’s refusing to testify because he’s not afraid of elected Democrats."

Time - The Unmaking of the White Christian Worldview
"Recent surveys by PRRI, an organization I lead, reveal disturbing realities among white evangelical Protestants today: 61% believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. And the idea of patriotism has taken a troubling turn: 68% believe Trump is a “true patriot,” and one in three believe that “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” More than seven in ten deny that the history of slavery and discrimination in the U.S. has any bearing on economic inequalities between white and Black Americans today. White evangelicals are the religious group most likely to refuse COVID-19 vaccines and object to mask mandates. One in four are QAnon conspiracy believers."
"White evangelical Protestants—the once self-proclaimed “moral majority”—have fallen from nearly a quarter of Americans just over a decade ago to 14.5% of the public today."
"James Baldwin wrote, with anger and pity, about the Black experience of seeing white people as “the slightly mad victims of their own brainwashing.” He understood whites, and white Christians in particular, to be trapped in a kind of self-induced psychosis, stemming from the strain of sustaining a conception of themselves as repentant sinners while living lives of indifference and violence toward their fellow Black and brown citizens."

september 2021

not much reading this month. been going out more often, and have been much more tired from work. 

reminiscence (2021), the emoji story (2020), this changes everything (2018), worth (2020)

Vox - The Death of the Job
NYT - Does Free College Work?
Taste - Strawberry and Kiwi: Why?
Buzzfeed - Why Am I Sp Bad At Typign?
The Atlantic - Colleges Have a Guy Problem
GQ - The Marathon Men Who Can't Go Home
GQ - The Best Things About the Worst Year Ever
Taste - Food Brands Fight the Background Check
Slate - “Men’s Rights Asians” Think This Is Their Moment
Vogue - What 6 Weeks Pregnant Looked and Felt Like to 6 Women
The Smithsonian - How Do Astronauts Spend Their Weekends in Space?
ABC News - North Korea holds 1st military parade since Biden took office
NPR - What I Learned From Watching Every Sport At The Tokyo Olympics
Inverse - How Marvel's Shang-Chi had to "Destroy" It's Own Racist Origins
Atlas Obscura - The Blacksmith Turning Decades of Chinese Bombs Into Kitchen Tools
Quartz - The racial dynamics between American women are flipped in a disorienting photo series
Refinery29 - A Japanese Man Was Hollywood’s First Sex Symbol So Stop Emasculating Our Asian Leading Men

Teen Vogue - Police Are Dying of COVID While Police Unions Fight Vaccines
"In 2020, COVID-19 was the highest cause of death for police officers on the job"

The Counter did a 3 part series on the prison / food industry complex. it's worth a read

The Counter - How corporations buy—and sell—food made with prison labor
"Across the country, at least 650 correctional institutions have some sort of food processing, landscaping, or farming operation..."
"States are allowed to garnish up to 80 percent for room and board, taxes, and other expenses. Again, Rice said, the concern about wages was not so much about the rights of incarcerated workers—rather, lawmakers wanted to ensure prison labor did not undercut the free market."
"For long hours in the hot sun, they earn as little as 4 cents per hour."

The Counter - This under-the-radar supply chain routes food from prisons to hospitals, food banks, and even schools
"PIECP rules allow corrections departments to withhold up to 80 percent of workers’ wages."
"The idea that the person who’s incarcerated should be paying for their own incarceration runs completely contrary to our knowledge of the prison system as a publicly funded and equally funded agency, right?"

The Counter - “Essential” and exploitable: Prison factories stayed open during the pandemic. People got sick.
"researchers have identified at least 650 U.S. correctional institutions that have some sort of food processing, landscaping, or farming operation. About half of states run some sort of farm or animal agriculture operation. People employed in state prisons earn anywhere from nothing to $5.15 per hour, averaging $0.14 to $1.14, according to a 2017 study by the Prison Policy Initiative. In federal institutions and many states, incarcerated people cannot refuse to work."
“I think one of the most obvious injustices in our prison system is that you have people who are working certain jobs, and then they come out of the prison system and they can’t get those same jobs on the outside.”

august 2021

the donut king (2020), luca, 

Taste - We Can’t Quit the Ziploc
The Atlantic - The Limits of Sex Positivity
The Atlantic - Vaccinated America Has Had Enough
The New Yorker - America Ruined My Name for Me
The Atlantic - The Vaccine Cards Are the Wrong Size
Vox - Why school lunches feel like they’re frozen in time
Quartz - The Five Universal Laws of Human Stupidity
The Conversation - When men started to obsess over six-packs
NYT - Pandemic Aid Programs Spur a Record Drop in Poverty
BBC - Why South Korean women are reclaiming their short hair
NYT - Inside the Diverse and Growing Asian Population in the U.S.
The New Yorker - Tokyo’s Olympics Have Become the Anger Games
Wired - How Some Americans Are Breaking Out of Political Echo Chambers
Bloomberg - Shipping Chaos Kills 1,800 Cows, Fueling Calls for Animal Ban
NYT - A Chinese ‘Auntie’ Went on a Solo Road Trip. Now, She’s a Feminist Icon.
Narratively - The Acrobatic Immigrant Who Invented Pilates in a Prisoner of War Camp
CNET - Take a look inside Air Horse One to see how racehorses fly to the Kentucky Derby
Bored Panda - People Are Shaming Their Dogs, And Here Are 43 Of The Worst Good Boys Ever
National Geographic - How science solved the mystery of feet washing ashore in the Pacific Northwest
Washington Post - Rand Paul discloses 16 months late that his wife bought stock in company behind covid treatment
The Hill - Stunning new report ranks US dead last in health care among richest countries—despite spending the most
Pro Publica - “Don’t You Work With Old People?”: Many Elder-Care Workers Still Refuse to Get COVID-19 Vaccine

Business Insider - COVID allowed Raquel Esquivel and 4,500 others to be released from overcrowded federal prisons. So why is she back behind bars?

Vogue - The Powerful Story Behind the German Gymnastics Team’s Unitards
Wall Street Journal - Bye-Bye Bikinis? Athletes at the Olympics and Beyond Fight Sexist Uniforms